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Dimitri thinks he must be tired. The stronger word for it, the more accurate one, he does not know. He hasn’t slept well in years, and the first year of his reign has so far been no exception. He’s adapted, kept himself together—when there’s no chance at more, one learns to subsist on very little.
So while he turns reflexively to exhaustion to excuse his current lapse, it does not explain why, instead of the maps and ledgers spread about the table, Dimitri’s focus is instead settled entirely on the newly instated Duke Fraldarius’ neck.
He admires the fine hairs at Felix’s nape, the gap of exposed skin above his high collar, and the beauty mark just below it that comes in and out of sight with Felix’s shifting. The view is made possible by how Felix has tossed his ponytail over one shoulder: the ends of his hair nearly brush the tabletop as he bends over it, seated and attentive while Dimitri is neither.
Dimitri cannot not afford these slips, he knows. Any daydream of his carries heavy cost; his concentration should be elsewhere. But wasn’t it Felix who said it? If I am to work with you, there must be someone intact to work with. And then, when pressed: all of your toil, the charity, the damnable grace. Gift it upon yourself sometime. How do you expect to lead while living on scraps as you do?
“Your Majesty,” Felix says presently, discernibly irritated.
Ah, Dimitri thinks, with his consciousness gone a little strange, languid like a warm bath. I’ve been caught. Felix had noticed the gap in his attention. The way he stresses Dimitri’s title proves it—trying to ensure he’s heard.
“Yes?”
Felix looks over his shoulder, and seems surprised, as though he hadn’t expected Dimitri to be standing so close. He takes a visible half-breath.
“We need to consider restructuring our system of address,” he says. “If we take last week’s incident as a temperature for all merchants, it appears they feel they’ve not been given their due—“
“Hmm.”
It’s enough of a sound that Felix breaks off. He waits, though clearly galled by the interruption, to see what Dimitri will say.
Felix is correct of course. Dimitri had been up just last night, rewriting the official conventions himself. The papers should be back from the scribe no later than this evening.
The window to his study is cracked, to circulate what air it may after a winter spent tightly shuttered. Dimitri smells spring, its nascent signs. A whim strikes.
“Say it again,” he says.
“I spoke very clearly the first time,” Felix says, then looks over his shoulder again and seems to reform himself. “Which part need I clarify?”
“Ah,” Dimitri says. He reaches out, slips his fingers beneath Felix’s ponytail, and moves it needlessly to the other shoulder. It is so fine in his hands. Even with gloves on, he can tell. Felix tolerates this with his eyes averted, his cheeks taking on color.
“Not the merchants’ grievances.” Dimitri leans his hip against the table beside Felix, so Felix need not contort to look at him. “Say it again, if you would, Your Grace.”
Felix is very careful about his next inhale. His gaze jumps Dimitri’s neck, his jaw, his mouth, until he is looking him direct in the eye.
“Your Majesty,” he says. His voice is level and unhurried, though his eyes flare, and his cheeks are a lovely pink still.
Dimitri smiles. He does not have to ask himself to smile, nor wonder at what it may look like; it steals onto his face, easy as anything.
“Once more?” he says, because Felix has always, always made himself too easy a mark for harmless teasing.
“This is indulgent,” Felix says.
“Then indulge me,” Dimitri says.
Felix’s expression flashes something too quick and complicated to read fully: surprise, want, a challenge met; perhaps even satisfaction, a sort of pride in Dimitri, if Dimitri’s impressions can be trusted.
“As you wish,” he says curtly, then meets Dimitri’s eye again— “Your Majesty.”
It was startling, at first, to hear Felix adopt the royal deference. Though he showed no outward sign, Dimitri felt nearly embarrassed, and beneath that, a small shock of pleasure that he scrutinized for weeks afterward in his private moments.
But more startling than that initial utterance was the first time Felix had used Dimitri’s title when they were alone. Felix had flustered then, seeming caught out.
Damnit. He’d looked resolutely away from Dimitri, and seemed determined to explain himself. You need—legitimacy, in your role. You can no more afford my public—he appeared to struggle for the word—impertinence than I can afford any appearances of your favoritism.
Felix, Dimitri said gently, to his oldest friend. What does this have to do with my title?
Felix’s face had colored then, too. His jaw worked. In ensuring I would do you no public disrespect, it seems I have over-corrected. Enough to embarrass myself while in private.
Felix says it now, that which he worked hard to master, and Dimitri drinks it like water or sunlight. It fills and settles in him.
His hand skirts Felix’s where it lay on the table, and their smallest fingers brush. Dimitri offers Felix a smile, the fruit of Felix’s own labor.
“Thank you,” Dimitri says. “That should be enough to see me through to the end of the day, I think.”
“Wonderful for you,” Felix says dryly. “Meanwhile I’ve been put in disarray, and with our next meeting minutes from now.”
Felix undoes his ponytail while he speaks, casting a look at Dimitri with just the barest pretense of annoyance laid over it. He gathers his hair again in his fist, exposing his neck, and then waits with an air of expectation.
“Well?” he says, holding his ribbon out for Dimitri to take. “Put it to rights, Your Majesty.”